


The Whole of the Moon

by Piinutbutter



Category: Hylics (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Dysfunctional Relationships, Other, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 19:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: Once, they were kings.





	The Whole of the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Hey, self. Do you think you could start liking fandoms that are, I dunno...normal? Popular?
> 
> My brain, churning out plotbunnies for surrealist indie claymation JRPGs: you what now

Two weeks after Wayne beheaded a king and watched his home turn to dust floating in dead space, a poet came to his door. 

Wayne thought he was hallucinating at first. He’d been gardening all day; maybe the heat was getting to him. He dusted dirt from his hands as the familiar figure stepped up to the fence.

“I thought you were dead,” was the first thing Wayne said. “No one on the moon could have survived that.”

Dracula spoke. His resounding, clear tone was gone. Time had taken sandpaper to his vocal cords. “I have been living in exile for years.”

“Huh. Good, I guess. That you’re alive. Not that Gibby kicked you out.” Silence stretched between them as Wayne packed his trowel into a bag of dirt-encrusted garden miscellanea. “I, uh, wish I could say it’s nice to see you again.” But it wasn’t, and they both knew it.

“I apologize. I am not here on a social visit, Wayne.” 

“Sure you’re not.” Wayne stood up and slung the bag over his shoulder. He jerked his head at his house. “Let’s talk inside.”

Dracula wasted little time with niceties. “Let me be clear: I do not begrudge the actions you took against Gibby. It was necessary. But you have still left us without a king. That needs to be rectified.”

Wayne’s back tensed. “Does it? I don’t see the harm in letting people rule themselves.”

Dracula’s lowest set of eyes twitched. Wayne remembered that gesture. It meant he was in for a lecture on how naive he was acting. Never mind he couldn’t help it.

“People are growing restless, Wayne. The cultists in the North are making moves to expand their control. A lone mountain is no longer enough for them, now that they know they could have the world. Do you believe their rule would be any fairer than Gibby’s?”

Wayne busied his hands by picking up Cat #4, who was staring at Dracula with suspicion. “I can call the others who helped me with Gibby. A few cultists are no match for us.”

Dracula’s shapeless hands twirled and clenched the fabric of his cloak. “They are no longer ‘a few.’ And they are far from the only faction looking to take advantage of this sudden upheaval of power.”

“I know,” Wayne snapped, because he didn’t have anything smarter to say.

The poet sighed. “You showed initiative in taking down your-” he paused, words failing him for once, “-in taking down Gibby. I hoped it was a sign you’d changed.”

“Well, I haven’t. Are you going to tell me it’s my fault I’m like this? Or are you finally going to accept that your experiment was a failure?”

Dracula stalked over to Wayne’s couch. Cat #4 hissed at the stranger’s sudden movement. 

“There are things you cannot help, I know that well. But you aren’t helpless, Wayne, and you aren’t a fool. Did you think everything would be simple after you assassinated the leader of our world? Did you think you could go back to living a carefree life?”

Yes. That was exactly what Wayne had been hoping to do. While his days away without a care in the world, reveling in the simple joys of music and gardening and friends.

Wayne had never noticed how much his internal voice sounded like Gibby. _You’re pathetic._

Out loud, Wayne said, "I can’t rule alone. I wasn't made for it." 

Dracula stared him down. His rows of eyes flickered through a cycle of slow blinks. "The human woman. You are close, and she is powerful. Could you not take her as queen?"

Wayne went cold. Somsnosa was his friend. His partner, in a relationship they had both chosen. The idea of taking her as queen, as Wayne had once been taken as king, made him retch. 

“No,” Wayne said. Simply: No. Quantifying or hedging the statement in any way would introduce uncertainty into his words. If there was one thing Wayne was certain about, it was that he didn’t want Somsnosa to suffer a monarch’s burden.

“So be it,” Dracula said. “Then you must take her weight on your shoulders.”

Wayne rubbed the top of his head between his horns. “Can’t you just find someone to be your new ruler? Anyone would be better than me. _You_ would be better than me.”

Dracula scoffed. “You know as well as I that I have no claim to the throne. Only two men possess that, and one of them is recently deceased.”

Cat #4 leapt out of Wayne’s arms and skittered upstairs. Wayne thought about following her. He sat down on the couch, sinking deep into the abused cushions. He looked straight ahead, but he could see Dracula watching him from the corner of his eye. It was a familiar sight.

Wayne’s first memory after his creation was the sight of the poet at his side, watching Wayne with the intensity of six eager eyes. A voice Wayne didn’t know, and couldn’t turn his head to see, had announced, “Everything turned out to spec. Come back if you need any adjustments made - we can only do them in the first three weeks. After that, he’s set for life.”

Wayne learned to walk within an hour. Speaking coherent words was still beyond him for a day or so, but he could understand Dracula clearly when the poet introduced him to another boy as he emerged from another birthing vat. Dracula went to the other boy, pushing his hands down as he poked and prodded at the still-soft clay of his body.

“Gibby,” Dracula addressed the boy. “Meet Wayne.”

There was no further introduction. No indication of what Gibby and Wayne were supposed to be to each other. They just were: Gibby and Wayne.

The first thing Wayne had said to the other, once speech had graced the both of them, was, “Your head is shaped weird.”

Gibby looked up from the juice box he was struggling to open. Motor skills were coming slower to him than they were to Wayne, who already took joy in running around the palace grounds, climbing on anything he could reach until the guards chided him and ushered him back inside.

“So is yours,” Gibby replied, finally managing to pierce the box’s foil.

“Nuh-uh,” Wayne said, flopping down on the floor next to him. “I look like Dracula.” He didn’t, really. His comparative logic was still developing. The only similarity between Wayne and the boys’ strange guardian was that they both possessed horns. But Gibby’s head was swollen, too big for his body. He never did grow into it.

After a few days’ time, their personalities began to show drastic differences. Gibby was quiet most of the time, preferring to spend his time alone in his room. Wayne was bubbly and curious, making the rounds of the palace to try and make friends with the various workers. As poorly-socialized as he was, Wayne could already recognize they were acting strange around him. The cooks and cleaners would try to indulge his questions with nervous smiles, then send him away as soon as he would go. Wayne found Dracula in his study and complained about it one day.

The poet closed his books and set his pen aside. “You’re a princeling, Wayne. They don’t want to interfere with your education.”

That didn’t satisfy him, but Dracula wouldn’t give any further answers, so Wayne pouted and ran off to bother Gibby.

It wasn’t long before the reins were tightened on Wayne’s childish freedom, and he was instructed to join Gibby in lessons. After all, one day they would inherit the throne.

“Both of us?” Wayne asked.

“Both of you,” their teacher for the day confirmed.

Gibby took his nose out of his book long enough to protest this assertion. He knew their home’s history. Monarchs were singular powers - only one could be installed at any given time. 

“That’s how it used to be done,” the teacher explained. “You and Wayne are the first of a new system.”

“Was something wrong with the old one?” Wayne asked, fiddling with his pencil. Gibby rolled his eyes at the casual display of ignorance.

“The previous monarchs have been ineffective and pugnacious,” Gibby said. He liked using big words. He thought they made him sound smart. All they really did was make it so Wayne had no idea what he was saying. “I was under the impression I would have a chance to right their wrongs.”

The teacher wrung her hands. “You will! Just with Wayne at your side.”

That didn’t sound like a good idea to Wayne. He didn’t want to be anyone’s king. Gibby did, so why not let him rule alone? Further prodding only got them the teacher insisting that it had to be this way. No monarchy got it right the first time.

Indeed, Dracula would reflect, ages later and alone on an island built for an exile. The two kings had been a desperate try for balance, doomed to fail from the beginning. Gibby was always too much. Wayne was never enough. All by design. To say they were two halves of the same whole would be incorrect. They were opposite ends of a scale, carefully placed and cultivated so as to keep the world in balance. 

No one accounted for the consequences of letting them meet in the middle.

The boys were men before Dracula had a chance to truly know them. They took the throne as soon as the preparations for the coronation ceremony could be completed. The night passed in a loosely-strung frenzy of pomp and tradition, and then they were kings. A frigid marriage of brothers without binding blood.

It worked, for a time. Gibby, sharp and calculating, provided the strategic edge needed to handle the affairs of a kingdom still pulling itself out of the trenches of past turmoils. Wayne, soft and empathetic, tempered Gibby’s edge when it got too sharp, providing much-needed give and mercy in the royal decisions.

The balance was tenuous, though, and none felt the shaky foundations more than the men holding it up. Gibby began to suffer from severe headaches. Wayne was uncertain if it was due to the stress of his station, or the simple weight of his head. He found Gibby sleeping face-down on a desk in the study one evening, the back of his head gouged deep enough that Wayne saw skull. Treading quietly, Wayne awkwardly packed the clay back into place and rested a blanket over Gibby’s shoulders. He didn’t know what else he could do to help. Except...

When Gibby pulled himself together in the morning and began to leave their rooms, Wayne stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Gibby gave him a look that landed somewhere between confusion and suspicion. 

“You’re not feeling too hot.” Wayne said it like an apology. “Let me handle things today.”

It took a lot more words to convince him, but eventually Gibby conceded that he’d be better off with a day of rest. Wayne marched off to a day of boring meetings, both nervous and oddly freed by the knowledge that for once, he’d be working alone. Bouncing off of Gibby’s decisions - and more often than not going head-to-head with them - got old after a while.

Wayne did a damn good job on his solo debut, if he did say so himself. Some land disputes between neighboring towns had spurred their citizens to violence. Wayne ruled that the official boundaries should be drawn on the basis of allowing both populations equal access to natural resources, a ruling that overwrote lines set in legal stone for as long as records had been kept. A group of ambassadors demanded better traveling conditions between Earth and the moon, citing that doing their job was difficult when they feared the ships they were traveling on would explode any minute. Wayne signed off on the funding paperwork with a smile and a flourish of his hand.

He returned to the bedrooms with a spring in his step. Gibby noticed. 

“Am I to hope that you haven’t brought our people to cataclysmic ruin in my absence?” he asked, deadpan.

Wayne reached over and flicked Gibby’s nose, earning him a glare. “I handled everything. Go back to sleep.”

All was peaceful for two more days in which Wayne took over their duties. Dracula came to Wayne in the meeting hall one afternoon to give his congratulations.

“I’m impressed,” the poet admitted. “You never showed much interest in being a leader.”

Wayne leaned back in his stiff-backed chair, linking his fingers behind his head and grinning easily. “Well, I’m a king now, so I might as well make the best of it.”

The peace shattered the next day with the sound of Gibby throwing a stack of papers onto the desk in Wayne’s bedroom.

“You said you’d handle things,” Gibby said, his voice frigid. “Not ruin all our hard work in three days.”

Wayne cocked his head. “Come again?”

Gibby rubbed his forehead hard enough that clay smoothed and smeared beneath his fingertips. “You’re too soft. You’re letting everyone who walks through the fortress doors take advantage of you, and rulings like these can’t last.” Gibby shoved the papers towards Wayne. Some of them fluttered to the floor. “As kings, we have a future to plan for. You can’t just think of the now and hope everything stays better.” His voice was rising, and Wayne fought the urge to lean back as Gibby braced his palms on the desk and leaned over him. “You’re wasting money, resources, and time, not to mention my reputation. I’m not having it, Wayne.”

Wayne stared up at him and asked, softly, “Are you done?”

Gibby turned and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him loud enough to be heard palace-wide.

Their partnership fell apart piece by piece after that. Where Gibby had once turned an ear to Wayne enough to consider his suggestions, Wayne now found himself shut out entirely. In retaliation, Wayne began to go behind the other king’s back. It was simple, when most of the staff in the palace liked him better. Favors were easily given, and Wayne found himself sabotaging Gibby’s more aggressive efforts on the daily. The arrangement was even more tenuous than the last, but Wayne made it work. 

Of course, that couldn’t last forever, either. Wayne expected Gibby to be angry when he found out. He hadn’t expected just how angry.

Wayne had never died before. He’d read about it. He’d heard from one of the cooks how it felt, to feel the life flow from your body in one violent, glorious rush. If Wayne wasn’t so well-protected, the cook had said, he would have died plenty by now. But his pampered upbringing left Wayne clueless about the realities of death. Now, he was staring it down in Gibby’s eyes. 

Gibby had confronted him in the bedroom, and now Wayne found himself on his bed, elbows digging into the mattress as he struggled to pry Gibby’s hands from his neck. Gibby was straddling him, and it was probably just the panic and lack of oxygen, but Wayne thought that if Dracula were here right now, he’d be saying something about a cruel mockery of a marriage consummated at last.

“You deserve death a dozen times over, you know that?” Gibby said, his voice low and hot as he dug the heels of his palms into Wayne’s throat. “All I’ve done for us, all I’ve done for you, and this is how you repay me? How you repay your people?”

Gibby didn’t want a response, and Wayne didn’t try to give one. 

“No.” Gibby’s hand moved up, gripping Wayne’s chin, forcing him to arch his neck back until he could no longer see the fire in Gibby’s eyes. “No, you’ll just come back if I kill you. I’ll lock you away. Seal your mouth over so you can’t spread anymore lies.” 

Wayne’s hearing was fluttering out of focus. Gibby was saying something about crime, treason, and punishment. He didn’t know. Wayne placed his hands over Gibby’s and spoke with the last of his breath before taking his first trip to the afterlife. “It’s fine. I’ll leave.”

Years and dozens of deaths later, Wayne looked up from his hands. Dracula’s gaze hadn’t wavered from him.

“I need some time to think,” Wayne finally said.

Dracula nodded. “That, I will grant you. You know where to find me.”

It was more like Dracula knew where to find him. Wayne didn’t bother to make the correction. He led the poet to the door, saw him off, then walked to his garden. There, he grabbed a set of shears and gouged at his skull until the gentle waves of the afterlife swam into being in front of him.

He needed a nap.

**Author's Note:**

> [Overused title source is overused, but come on, the song was too perfect not to use for these two.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TON3PORRDQ)


End file.
